In North-West Canada. 139 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



'UNE IGth. — Arrived at Virden, at 8 o'clock in the 

 morning, and put up at the hotel near the station. 

 As I was tired with travelling all night, I went 

 and had a sleep until dinner time. Dinner over, 

 I set out for a tramp to the south of Virden. Virden 

 (f^"^ is the market town of a particularly attractive dis- 

 trict, but for forty miles west of this place is a stretch of vir- 

 gin prairie held by speculators, and the few farms near the 

 railway are scattered far and wide. There are numerous 

 ponds, sloughs and bluffs in this section, affording excellent 

 opportunities for sport, wild ducks and prairie chickens being 

 exceedingly abundant. I came across a prairie stream, the 

 banks of which were fringed with small oaks, ash-leaved 

 maple and poplar. Of these, the poplar or trembling aspen 

 is the characteristic tree of the North-West. As the tra- 

 veller goes west, he sees hardly any other for hundreds of 

 miles. To the south-west of Virden stretches the level prairie, 

 dotted here and there with islets of aspens. 



I wandered along the sides of the stream, and soon found 

 the trees along its banks afforded shelter to numerous spe- 

 cies of small birds. 



I soon found a number of nests of bronzed grackle, red- 

 winged starling and kingbird ; the two former species had 

 eggs, but the kingbirds had not yet commenced to lay. 



Birds' nests began to be so numerous that it appeared as if 

 all the small birds for miles around had come and made their 

 nests in the trees and bushes along this stream. The reason 

 is, that suitable nesting-places for the small woodland birds 

 are few and far between on the prairies, and that accounts for 

 so many nests being found in these isolated bluffs and strips of 

 trees along the banks of the streams. About every bush con- 

 tained a bird's nest, and there must have been scores of nests 



